


The Armoury

by PaperGirlInAPaperTown



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Drabble, Ends on a slight cliffy, Gen, Guardians of Childhood References, One Shot, because i needed something with Pitch and that uniform of wasted potential hanging in his closet, feel trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 00:22:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15376644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperGirlInAPaperTown/pseuds/PaperGirlInAPaperTown
Summary: Pitch contemplates his life from before. Could this be a turning point?





	The Armoury

It had been an age. Longer. 

In fact, Pitch couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he had last visited this room. The brittle, paper-skinned hand of decay could have sent it crumbling out of neglect and ruin in the last century or so — Gods knew most everything else in his realm did eventually — and he would have been none the wiser. Yet here his armoury stood with its cache intact. For millennia, Pitch had disregarded its existence, having refused to confront the painful memories it dredged up out of cowardice and shame. But with the past relentlessly nipping at his heels and showing no signs of exhaustion, he could run from it no longer.

Long and relatively narrow, the armoury’s walls were adorned with enough weapons to invoke bloodlust in Ares himself. Swords sheathed in leather, expertly crafted arrows, spears, bows, crossbows, a myriad of close-combat daggers. All were neatly displayed in their rightful positions, untouched by his hands nor Time’s it seemed. The blades and their hilts gleamed softly, striking despite the low light. They showed no signs of wear or rust. They were immaculate. Though the pride they evoked from their creator was embittered at best. 

And at the end of this lethal cave of wonders stood a cabinet of crystal. 

Pitch stared up at the military uniform of illustrious achievements and noble splendour locked within. How fitting that the golden livery hung on its mannequin should be kept tantalisingly out of reach. Black, Knee-high boots were worn over breeches of a bygone era, and a white, buttoned-down tunic clung to the mannequin’s torso. But the ensemble’s real statement piece was its tailcoat. Ornamental braided cords — aiguillettes — fitting of a high-ranking officer were fastened to the epaulette of the right shoulder. They draped in splendid decoration over its breast adorned with silver buttons and were set with moonstones that glimmered. The bullion fringes of the epaulettes shone like spun gold and Pitch absorbed every detail of piping and braiding tucked into its seams. With embroidered embellishments that flared at its cuffs and hemline, his old coat looked nothing short of magnificent.

Except, it wasn’t _his_ coat. It had belonged to someone else. A man of the Golden Age. 

Should Kozmotis Pitchiner have ever glimpsed the future tragedy that would consume him all those millennia ago, Pitch shuddered to think of the lunacy that the man might have been driven to. Kozmotis had eventually, inevitably lost his mind, unable to cope with the pain of having that which he loved most stolen in the most brutal way possible. But surrendering to the insanity of the Nightmare King had brought a different sort of bliss once he realised, that with his wife and daughter gone, there was nothing left of himself to lose. He had become both a widower and a…well, there was no true title. How could one exist when the death of a child is too awful to put into words? Reduced to nothing, this man had succumbed to such depravity that wouldn’t have been right had he still been a husband and father. 

A young general.

A hero.

Pitch Black was none of these things. He had far from proven himself capable of loving as he once had; his daughter was alive but estranged; his authority had been exploited for the sake of tyranny; and he had fallen so far from grace that not even the angels could find reason to mourn him. But hope was a stubborn little weed. It poked through the cracks of his despair and sometimes he caught glimpses. They were fleeting, dull, and few, but if he closed his eyes he could reach back through the past, almost touch the person he had once been… 

Initially, Pitch had assumed his offer of Guardianship to be nothing but an act of spite or mockery. A way for Manfred Lunanoff to break the monotony of endless days trapped in eternal solitude, with nothing but the maddening merri-go-round of his own thoughts for company. After all, it wasn’t a stretch to assume such a childish man might bore easily. _Dangle the spider over a burning flame and see how he dances._ But after seeing his — no; not _his_ — old uniform, Pitch’s conviction had faltered. What if the Man in the Moon was foolish enough to believe that there was some light to be found in him? And what sort of hero did that make him, now that he had left a trail of smouldering destruction spanning centuries in his wake? He had hurt people. He had destroyed whole civilisations. Rectifying his wrongs would not be as simple as slipping that ancient, musty coat over his shoulders and just _forgetting_.

Yet, Pitch allowed himself to imagine a life where he might somehow rise. A life where he was more than a mere creaking of floor boards, or howling wind in the dead of night. A life where he was free to do as he required. A life where wasn’t just trying to survive. There was a balance in desperate need of restoration, and as a Guardian Pitch was beginning to realise he could tip the scales in his favour. He could have even begun to formulate a scheme, had he not sensed the presence of a being other than himself in the room.


End file.
